Sta Maria

Woke up to quite good weather, and after a long breakfast and lots of chatting, the six of us all fancied the hike up to to the monastery Sta Maria, high up above Claro. First we had to walk through the village, it’s long and is a string of old stone house settlements which are now all one community. Next, the path went very steeply up through the forest, definitely an old pilgrims way, cobbled stone path, with little chapels all the way up. You couldn’t see so much of the monastery, but we could go in the church. The view was fabulous, and the palm trees certainly gave a Mediterranean feel to place. We were doing a circular walk, so just had to go up another 160m to another little mountain settlement.
Now the trees were mainly chestnut trees, some were huge hundreds of years old trees, set on the steep hillside with ruins of old dwellings. It was steep and rocky coming down, and one friend was really struggling, so I gave him my trekking poles to help. Slowly we were back at the village, got some supplies from the shops, and made our way back to the campsite.
After a nice cold beer, an Apero of local cheeses, bread and salami, Iris and I had a quick swim in the pool, this time actually did 2 lengths! We cooked spaghetti carbonara together for dinner, with salad and washed down with local Merlot de Ticino. It rained quite heavily, but we could sit out until quite late, dry under our tarp attached to the van’s sunshade.
9km, 580 m ascent and 3.5 hours.